How can I control each piston of a pile of 8 pistons?

Question

Is there a way to be able to control (make it open or close) each piston (separately) of a pile of 8 pistons put like this:

    P
    P
    P
   ...
    P

Asked by Jeffrey

Answer

I don't believe this is currently possible. It is possible to isolate the inputs to each piston such that they can be independently extended, but the problem arises when you want to independently retract them. Here is the key point from the "Bugs" section of the Minecraft Wiki for Pistons:

If two extended pistons are one above the other, the lower one cannot retract until the upper one retracts (video explanation). If the top one will start extending while bottom one is still retracting, the last will start extending as well.

The only possible solution I can think of (which isn't ideal) would be to retract all higher pistons whenever a given piston needs to retract, then return them to their previous state (extended or retracted) after a brief delay. This is the only way to ensure that a given piston can retract, but would require some messy redstone circuitry.

Here's hoping that this bug will be fixed in the future.

Answered by gnovice

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